Monthly Archives: July 2012

It’s a side of human nature which we may not be proud of, but which we all possess. That side that causes us inexpressible delight when our wealthy brother-in-law shows off his brand new luxury watch and we inform him … Continue reading →

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a smallish dude. Not Chinese small, maybe—the average height of a Chinese person is 5’4”—but trust me, I was never the first kid with a finger pointed at him at the start of a pick-up … Continue reading →

In the previous century, when I was at university as a psych major, B.F. Skinner was all the rage, and my Operant Conditioning and Behavior Analysis class focused on the relative non-efficiency of negative reinforcement. It stressed that ‘punishment’ changes … Continue reading →

If I was a chef (which I’m not, but I bet this conjecture is close to the mark) and one week I over-ordered, say, lobster, prime rib and maybe Macedonian weasel cheese, here’s what I’d do: I’d purée them all … Continue reading →

The best part of covering celebrity wines is that you don’t actually have to taste them to finagle columns from them thousands of words long. And do you know why? Because, my droogies, there’s no need to taste a celebrity … Continue reading →

Not saying that they are all simply crackers pastoral folk in Languedoc-Roussillon, that hillbilly heaven bucolic land in the south of France, but here is their recipe for Bœuf Bourguignon, one of the most beloved classical dishes of French culinary … Continue reading →

People are always winging on and on and on about things they hate—Monday mornings, the Westboro Baptist Church, Rush Limbaugh, root canals, giant spiders in the basement, the U.S. military massacring innocent Iraqi civilians… Yeah, granted, all that stuff blows … Continue reading →